Content Length: How Long Should It Be?

A common question most marketers find themselves asking, is how long should my content be? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this, as the ideal length of your content varies based on what you plan to achieve.

However, to assist you in deciding what length is best for you, here is a brief break down of the benefits of short and long-form content:

Short and Sweet

People want information quick or they’re on to the next source.(Source: Giphy)

There are a few key things you need to take into consideration in order to attract waning attention spans: content needs to be formed in the inverted pyramid and kept at reasonably short lengths.

The average person only reads 28 per cent of the content they click on, which means readers want to get their information as quick and easily as possible.

Putting the most important information at the top of the pyramid will draw your audience in and keeping your content short, 300-400 words, is thus more likely to keep them reading beyond the opening paragraph.

Additionally, with over 55% of people spending less than 15 seconds on a page, the shorter and snappier your message, the more likely it is to get a across.

Long and Informative

With the average persons attention span being only 8 seconds, you might ask why you would even consider writing long-form content. The answer is simple; longer content results in higher SEO.

Research conducted by serpIQ shows the top 10 Google results contain approximately 2000 words and according to Forbes, the reason for this is, “Googlebot, Google’s web crawler, looks at every piece of content on a page, such as words, titles and whatever other information you’ve shared.”

What this means is that if you have 1500-2000 words, you are able to have more, and less specific, keywords regarding your subject. The more keywords, the more likely it is to appear higher up in a search, resulting in more page views.

Ultimately, the length of your content depends on the message you plan to get across and the goal you are trying to achieve. Whatever length you feel best fit, the most important thing to remember is quality will always be more important than quantity.

ScribbleLive is an award-winning content performance company that provides global brands with the insights and solutions they need to better attract, convert, and retain their audiences. Companies such as RedBull, Fedex, Dell, Reuters, Yahoo, American Express and the Boston Globe leverage the ScribbleLive Content Cloud to create scalable, premium content, interactive experiences and real-time audience engagement. Our goal is to help you optimize your content performance and drive better business results.